Berklee Valencia Culminating Experience: Seek Business Plan The Future Of Live Entertainment Developed by Alexandra Morancy 2 Table of Contents I. Table Of Contents ............................................................ 2 II. Participation Form ........................................................... 3 III. Introduction .................................................................... 4 Executive Summary ............................................................ 4 Company Description .......................................................... 5 Company Structure (Management) ..................................... 8 IV. Analysis .......................................................................... 9 Industry Analysis ................................................................. 9 Market Analysis ................................................................. 17 Internal Analysis (Economics) ........................................... 22 V. Plan Of Action ............................................................... 30 Operations Plan ................................................................ 30 Strategic and Marketing Plan ............................................ 36 Time Line (Gantt Diagram) ................................................ 42 Financial Projections ......................................................... 43 VI. Bibliography ................................................................. 52 VII. Appendices .................................................................. 56 3 4 III. Introduction Executive Summary In the current state of the music business, live entertainment has become a major revenue stream for artists. Fans are spending more money than ever on attending concerts, as well as purchasing food, drinks, and merchandise at the shows. Further, these fans will not only remember their concert experience, but the experience that led up to the event. Until now, nobody has tried to create a service that attributes itself to the pre-concert experience. That is the premise of Seek: to create a service in which a memorable concert experience begins with locating the show. ● Seek will produce a show in complete secrecy with an artist and a venue. A month prior to the show, the name of the artist and the date of the show will be teased to the public as a Seek show. ● On the day of the show Seek will blast clues about the location of the show on the Seek app. ● Consumers will have to follow the clues to find out the location, but once discovered, consumers will be prompted to plug the location into the app. ● If consumers guess correctly, they receive discounted entry, line jumpers, potential VIP passes, etc. ● If they don’t guess correctly, they are prompted to try after again after a few more clues! ● Consumers who don’t try to find the location will be told an hour before the concert the location of the event, allowing everyone to attend! Our customers, a group of live-seeking fans, will have the option (for the first time ever) to be incentivized for the pre-show experience that they were already having before Seek. Not only do we expect fans to use Seek: we expect it to become a trend in live-entertainment. It will compliment every pre-show event, from jamming in the car to the headliners music, to the burger run at the local joint, to the hype moment as you walk through the streets and traffic towards the venue doors. Seek: when hunting for concerts goes mainstream. 5 Company Description Seek is a new service that allows consumers a creative – and interactive – way to find out about upcoming concerts. Based on the idea of “Where is Fluffy?” from Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, and from the idea of guerrilla gigging, Seek will allow fans to hunt down their favorite artist’s concerts, and be rewarded for doing so. This service will rely on the Seek contracting medium-medium high range artists and trustworthy venues to develop concerts through the service. Through Seek, artists will commit, plan and produce a concert with the service. However, the concert will be developed in secrecy (creating “Seekret” shows), ensuring that the idea and integrity of Seek is maintained. A month before the concert is set to launch, the name of the artist and the city of the performance will be teased. This ensures that consumers can plan ahead for a concert, to a certain extent. Consumers will be prompted to sign up for the Seek application for IPhone, IPad and Android (the idea behind this being that only Seek consumers will receive exclusive details on secret shows). This application, when downloaded, will prompt the user to provide their location (or geo-tagging will be utilized to gain the persons location through the app) in order to give the user details on shows occurring in their area (initially, this service will only be provided in high density cities within the USA as a test run, starting with NYC). The application will feature a section dedicated to the description of how the app works and a section dedicated to featuring “clues” in the event of a secret show popping up in the area. However, the section with clues will remain empty UNTIL the day of the show. The day of a Seekret show, the user will begin to receive information through the Seek application. The first clue will provide the band name, reinstate the city of the event, and announce the time of the event. What will differentiate Seek is that the location of the show will not be provided. Instead, throughout the day, users will be provided with clues as to the location of the event. 10 clues will be provided for each Seek event throughout the day, and clues will be delivered to consumers on a 80/20 scale (80% of clues will be given through the application, and 20% will be given at physical locations near the event location. The physical clues will be provided by local business Seek will partner with in exchange for increased business for the other party through the partnership and a small commission). The Seek Marketing team will curate these clues, and every individual will receive the same clues throughout the day. There will be an option for the user to guess at the location of the concert through the Seek app, and for users who guess correctly before the concert begins, they will receive a discounted pre-show price for a ticket, as well as a line-jumper pass once they arrive at the show. However, the first 10 people to guess the location 6 will also receive backstage passes to meet the band after the concert in order to incentivize the desire to hunt down the location of the concert. Two hours prior to the performance, anybody who has the Seek application will receive the location of the performance. This will allow people who didn’t discover the location of the show correctly to have the information in order to get to the concert. The Seek Facebook/Twitter pages will also post the information about the show, allowing outside users who don’t have the app to know a concert is occurring. These users will pay full price at the door to attend the concert, and tickets will only be available based on how many tickets were sold through the Seek app during the day. When all is said in done, the result is to have a successful show with fans coming away from it feeling that the experience Seek gave them made their concert experience much more enjoyable by creating a “feeling of exclusivity and intimacy” to those who used clues to find the location of the show themselves. Highlights • Seek hires artist’s/venues to produce a “Seekret” concert. This concert will be teased a month before the show date. • The location will not be disclosed until the day of the event through the Seek application for smart phones and consumer participation. • Clues will be given to consumers through the Seek application as to where the location is the day of the concert. • 10 clues will be administered per Seek event. • Clues are 80% application administered, 20% physical administering. • Consumers plug in their location guess on the Seek application. • Correct guesses for the location will give consumer’s incentives (discounted door tickets, line-jumper passes, potential VIP passes). • 2 hours before the concert, the location of the show will be blasted on the application and through social media so others can attend (they attend for full-priced tickets). • This service creates a pre-show experience that will make them feel exclusivity and a sense of intimacy heightened by the effort they took in locating the show. Goals and Objectives Ultimately, the goal for Seek is to become the leading innovator for a pre-show concert service. We want to be known for our engaging service, our fair competitive nature, and our ultimate end product (a show that consumers want to hunt down and look for). We want to put on the best shows, and give consumers the best experience leading up to that. 7 Our objectives will be to fill our venues to at least 80% per show, to garner at least 1 million downloads of our application, and to begin seeing a profit within the business by our third year. Critical Success Factors for Seek The concept of Seek lies heavily on a grassroots, guerilla mentality, and there are many factors that need to be maintained in order for Seek to run smoothly and efficiently, while still maintaining an image. 1. The Secrecy of Venues – Seek will need venues to be able to remain quiet about a Seekret show if they decide to work with Seek. While Seek could work in non-conventional locations, such as repurposed spaces or parks, the cost to hire a production team for those purposes is avoidable by using a venue’s production team. These venues will need to be contractually obligated to hold the Seek secret. 2. The Secrecy of Artists – Artists and their management/labels need to also remain quiet about shows, but to a lesser extent than the venues. They can tease that they will be participating in a Seek campaign, but by no means can they promote the venue location in any way. 3. Promotion – With the secrecy of artists being said, we need their promotion, as well as effective marketing campaigns, to drive consumers to use the application and participate in a Seek campaigns.